A warm welcome to visitors and clients alike. If this is your first time here, please familiarize yourself with the links located at the top and bottom of the page; they will allow you to navigate and find what you need.

This website was built from the ground up using various forms of software and applications, namely Netbeans IDE and Adobe Photoshop CS5. The platform used for content management (CMS) is WordPress and running version 3.7.1 at the moment.

To give potential clients an idea of how long it took to build this particular website (excluding content such as text and photography), all of the work was coded by hand, in roughly 20-30 hours of work. Typically when deciding on how much a potential project will cost, it is measured in the amount of hours spent coding, editing, graphic designing, and overall development of the project. As always, estimates can be given based on meeting with clients 1-on-1.

This section on the front-page serves also as an outlet for development blogs and featured content from Tim. Time-to-time tidbits are written based on anything interesting in the Winnipeg web design world.

As always, should you have any questions or comments regarding potential projects or the website, feel free to contact us. Thank you for reading and hope to hear from you.

In the past two years, I haven’t been utilizing this website as much as I should. There are several reasons why, but listing them wouldn’t change the fact that there haven’t been any updates for such a long time. I won’t make any promises anymore on keeping yumestate up-to-date, simply because it would be unrealistic at this point in time with my present obligations and limited free time. However, I will promise to keep Yumestate.com up and running so that I don’t lose sight of what I have created and developed over the years. I want to be proud of the personal accomplishments this website has helped me achieve, regardless of how little and minor they are.

Nowadays, a website can be created automatically with a website generator or through several self-learning tutorials. Most of what I learned over the years can be done with a few clicks on a professional web-building business website. If you’ve studied HTML and CSS and/or have a little knack for graphic design in Adobe Photoshop, you’ll design something probably better than what I have now.

Regardless, looking back at what I created makes me happy that I went down this path of self-learning and growth. My knowledge of best-practice HTML/CSS is outdated now and my expertise is no where what it used to be. Thankfully I never intended to make this a full-time career choice, and it has always served as a hobby and pasttime of mine. Because of this, I was able to work at my own pace and enjoy the experiences of developing and designing your own website. From Macromedia Dreamweaver templates, to plain text editor HTML, to image maps, to blogging without PHP, adding content management platforms such as WordPress, it was definitely an adventure amidst the frustrations.

So I will continue to keep yumestate alive, and I hope that I can update it as frequently as possible. As I said before, I won’t make any promises because that would be unrealistic. However, I will always be happy with the way yumestate has turned out. Thanks.

If you stumbled on this website out of random curiosity, there isn’t too much on this website that will keep your curiosity piqued. That being said, feel free to have a look around:

I wrote about my university life and my struggles on retreat.yumestate.com, a previous version of yumestate.com

When I was still in junior high, I wrote several short stories about my friends. Keep in mind these aren’t meant to be serious and were written at a much different phase in life.

At one point, yumestate.com was an anime blog website that had several authors contributing content (anime2.yumestate.com)

I used to write reviews and articles on anime series, you can visit either of the links (anime.yumestate.com or anime2.yumestate.com) above to see details

There’s a lot more content on here, though it is scattered throughout yumestate.com. Don’t let that keep you from browsing and checking out the website though.

Currently, yumestate is a mix of sorts, from showcasing my portfolio, to archiving photographs that I’ve taken with my DSLR, to writing on things happening in my life at the moment. If you liked anything on here, don’t be afraid to comment or say something on the facebook/twitter page. Thank you for visiting yumestate.com.

Background: In the beginning of September 2013, I purchased my first camera from Henry’s Photography. While it was not an INSANE deal, I price matched a Costco advertisement for a Nikon bundle. Included in this bundle:

Nikon D5200 Body

Nikon D5200 Standard Kit Lens (18mm-55mm)

Nikon sling bag with 3 compartments

Nikon-WU Wireless Wi-Fi adapter

NIKKOR 55mm-300mm Zoom Lens

Two High Density Glass Filters, one for each lens

SanDisk 16gb 40mb/s high speed class 10 SD card

In total, everything came to $999.99, with taxes, $1130.00. Not too bad of a deal, though I would imagine there’s always going to be “a better deal” depending on how you look at it. In any case, this is what I bought and what I will be talking about in the rest of this post.

In general I have been impressed with my D5200 so far. It’s been about 7-8 months since I bought it, and I use it on a regular basis (about 3-4 times a week). The camera is lightweight, compact, and carries a number of features that let you play with photography. However, all these factors can go both ways, and sometimes I wish some of them were not a factor and I’ll explain what I mean below.

Personally, the weight of a camera is something to consider for sure. You don’t want to be lugging around a camera that weighs a ton, nor do you want a camera that feels like there’s nothing inside. I would say the D5200 is on the lighter side, and to me part of its design was focused on appealing to those that don’t want a heavier camera.

It’s smaller than my dad’s D90 (and maybe that’s because the D90 has its own focusing motor), but not too small in that it feels like a toy. You get a nice grip on the camera with just one hand, and you can take many shots without feeling like you have to use both hands. Overall, I would say it’s light, but has substance to it.

I admit that I haven’t played around with all of the features that come with the D5200. There are special effects you can use to produce a type of picture or change the colour in some way, but I guess because I’m focusing on understanding ISO, Aperture, and shutter-speed I haven’t looked at them.

The D5200 comes with a folding and reversible LCD screen, something that the lower version D3200 doesn’t have. This may not be much of a purchasing factor depending on your preferences, but I like it. The screen doesn’t get in the way when I’m looking through the viewfinder, and I don’t have to get any nose grease on the screen. I can also position the LCD in a direction that best suits the situation, like tilting it upwards or lifting it above my head for an overhead shot.

My overall impression of the camera is good. I like form-factor, I like the LCD swivel screen, and I like that it feels powerful but lightweight. I am impressed by Nikon’s production quality; it doesn’t feel cheap despite it having a plastic outer shell. I would definitely recommend it to someone just starting out in photography and wants a good mid-to-lower range SLR.

About Yumestate

Created and developed by Timothy Siu, Yumestate is a play on words fusion Japanese and English words. The name is a portmanteau of the Japanese word "Yume" which means Dream and combined to form "dreamstate". This website started in 2001 and continues to be a work-in-progress. I believe that like many things in life, learning is a continual process that will last forever; web design is no exception.

The goal of Yumestate is to provide an outlet for showcasing creativity using technology. Whether that's through web design, photography, or programming, the aim is to record and display work and track progress

The portfolio consists of existing web sites built in the past and used by my clients located in Winnipeg, Manitoba. These web sites range anywhere from informational, to business, to e-commerce, to personal use.

Officially, Yumestate has been an online registered business since 2010, though it started with an idea and project dating back to 2001. If you would like to read Tim's full history of web design and naming of the website, please read his post located here.

To get in contact with Yumestate, please visit the "contact" link located at the top or bottom of this page. Enjoy your stay!